Turkey Part 1 - At the Resort

This is the first in a series of posts about a travel experience. It’s kind of similar to my Swiss Journal and American Journal posts from the past, except that this time the impressions will be spread out in different, individual posts, instead of collected in one (I have already posted one entitled, The Loss of Dance). This time, it’s about a vacation on the south coast of Turkey. I returned just a few days ago, and it’s time to write.

Le Jardin

The resort where we stayed is called Queen’s Park Le Jardin. Located in Kemer in Turkey’s Antalya district, it’s an all-inclusive resort hotel, which means you pay one price for airfare, ground transportation to and from the hotel, room charges, food, drinks – almost everything.

Of course, they still find some things to entice you to spend extra money – like spa treatments and day trips to places like Istanbul, Israel, Cyprus or a number of places within Turkey. And if you really like spending money, the street outside the resort is lined with shops where Turkish entrepreneurs are ready to take tourists’ euros or dollars for various trinkets, most of which are probably made in China (isn’t everything?). You can walk and walk and walk in either direction from the resort, and there seems to be no end to the shops.

I was not sure what to expect from this place. Most of the photos we looked at on the Internet made it look glorious, but that’s what marketing propaganda is supposed to do. We saw a few photos of dirty rooms in poor repair posted on some third-party travel sites, but I think these might have been posted by one or two disgruntled guests. We saw nothing but a clean and very well-maintained facility.

Our room was a bit bigger than we had feared, which was a relief for me. It was a two-person room with an extra bed added for a third: me. The third bed was small and a bit uncomfortable with a support bar under the mattress pretty much where my hip needed to be, but that didn’t really affect my sleep. If my brain wanted me to sleep, I slept. And after full days of sun and sea, I was usually able to sleep pretty well.

One of the biggest parts of the experience at such a place is eating. There was a large restaurant that prepared meals in an all-you-can-eat, buffet format. The food area was connected to two huge dining halls: one for smokers and one for normal people. In addition, there was a restaurant located between the beach and the pools, which served a nice buffet-style lunch for those who wanted to have a quick lunch in their bathing suits.

Getting your food to the table safely in the main dining halls was a challenge as you had to navigate the chaos of hundreds of other people doing the same, most of whom didn’t pay attention to anyone else as they scurried from point to point, checking out the food and loading their plates. Little kids were a particular hazard.

The food quality was excellent! I especially loved being able to attack the salad bar, which had a mesmerizing variety of veggies already cut and ready to just be placed on your plate. It points out that I would sure eat a lot more salad at home if I didn’t have to buy and prepare all the vegetables myself. Yes, in this regard I am lazy.

The workers at Le Jardin were mostly Turkish with a few foreigners (Russian, German, etc.) in the entertainment crew (they call them "animators"). They were outstanding and mostly very polite. Almost all of them spoke some English and Russian. Many were fluent in Russian, and there are also many who could communicate in German and French.

The best attraction (in my opinion) was the beach area and being able to swim in the very warm Mediterranean Sea. It was my first time visiting the Med, and it seemed much saltier than my previous experiences with the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans; I read later that the Med is, in fact, saltier, especially in the eastern part. The resort also had several pools, water slides, a popular poolside bar and another bar inside the hotel, a nice spa, nightly entertainment, and other attractions.

Le Jardin is just one of a string of hotel resorts that line the seaside in Kemer. At any given time in the summer, there are thousands of tourists from countries all over Europe and elsewhere. There were LOTS of Russians there as well as tourists from Germany, France and other countries. Often we heard languages that we couldn’t place, perhaps from Scandinavian countries or Finland.

We knew that there were other Ukrainians there because at least two from our plane were on the same bus to this resort, and several families made the bus trip back to the airport with us for the flight to Kharkiv. But the few Ukrainians who were there were greatly outnumbered by Russians.

We heard English spoken, but not by any native speakers. Apparently there were some South Africans there, but we encountered no Brits. And there definitely were NO other Americans there. I was an anomaly at Le Jardin, and drew attention from some other guests for our conversations in English and Russian: we seemed to confuse a few people.

Heat and Humidity

You come to a beach vacation spot like this in summer because of beautiful weather and warm water. And we had those things here in spades. But along with that comes intense heat and, in many places, high humidity.

The temperatures were in the mid-to high 30s (Celsius) by day (that’s low to mid 90s F), and it rarely got below 25 C at night (77 F). The humidity ranged from around 30 percent, which is not too bad, to 100 percent, at which point I pretty much just melt. All in all, it sort of reminded me of my long-ago days on the island of Guam.

The sun was really intense from mid-morning to late afternoon. Despite liberal (I hate that word) use of sunscreen, I got sunburned by our second day, but it passed. We got into a routine of having lunch and resting a bit during the hottest part of the day, then returning for more swimming when the sun got a little lower in the sky and less intense.

And we also established "our spot" each morning in a grassy area with lots of trees for shade. While some people preferred to be poolside or right at the edge of the beach all day, we opted for what we called "The Garden," where we had shade for resting. We figured we could spend as much time in the sun as we wanted while swimming, and in fact, we spent much more time away from our lounge chairs than on them. And "our spot" was equally convenient to the beach and the pools, as well as to the hotel itself.

What got to me the most was the humidity. It just soaks into your clothes at certain times of the day and makes you feel really uncomfortable. Combined with intense heat, it can also make you feel sick. I have never liked high humidity, which is why I love Colorado and don’t miss the Eastern USSA.

For me, humidity also had other effects. It made it harder to sleep (although we did have mediocre AC in the room), and sometimes it just totally zapped the energy out of my body. Without the sea and pools there, I would have perished. After a while, it also gets to your mind and affects your mood and reactions. I found that I had to take extra care with this, especially in dealing with people from different cultures.

I had never appreciated cold showers like I did there. I wound up taking at least three, and sometimes four or five, showers per day. Mine were cold in order to pull the heat out of my body. I found it especially necessary to have a good cold shower before going to bed.

On the plus side, with beautiful weather combined with all-day swimming, you spend most of the day in bathing suits. And this means that your other clothes last longer (even underwear).

The Results

With the exception of one daytrip to Istanbul, we spent the entire 11 days swimming, eating and just relaxing. I had been told that it is impossible to go on such a vacation and lose weight, but that had been one of my goals. And I had pretty good success.

I returned home about three and a half kilos (more than seven pounds) lighter than when I had left, and I found that I could fit into several pairs of jeans and shorts that previously I could not wear. That was pretty encouraging.

The main reason was a lot of physical activity each day and very little sitting. We swam in the sea at least four or five times each day, plus there were pools and a fair amount of walking. This more than made up for the eating we did.

But even the eating was good. I ate fruit, salads and prepared vegetables at almost every meal, and the meat I ate was mainly grilled chicken or turkey. A couple of times I relented to stuff like hamburgers or pancakes, but this was the exception, not the rule. I probably could have done even better, but all things considered, the result was great.

In addition, in such high heat and humidity, you have to drink a LOT of water, and the resort bar always had plenty of bottled water available. So the combination of high activity, good eating, and drinking lots of water really had a positive result. My challenge, now that I am back in Kharkiv, is to keep it up and not regress. And this is a BIG challenge!

I also came back with the deepest suntan I’ve had in many, many years. I had not spent that much time by the sea in decades, and my shoulders, back and stomach had not seen that much sun for equally as long.

Perhaps most important of all, I did not think about work or similar concerns for almost the entire time. Except for some personal matters that I couldn’t shake entirely, I was able to let my mind take a real rest. And that is the purpose of such a vacation. The only problem was that the time was too short and went by in a flash. I would definitely go back and do it again.

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I have already posted some thoughts about dancing that came to me at one point during the trip. In the coming days, I’ll add a few more posts about this trip; I have already started on several. Some of the topics include the light show we got from the Perseid meteor shower, some further impressions of the other nationalities with whom we shared the place, smokers, being in the sea, my impression of Turkey, and more (I hope).